The air is getting crisper, the
nights are getting longer, and All Hallow’s Eve draws near. You know what that
means: it’s time to curl up with a book guaranteed to give you the shivers — or
at least make you check the locks twice. Here, for your horrifying pleasure,
are 50 of the scariest books ever written in the English language, whether
horror, nonfiction, or speculative futures you never want to see. One caveat:
the list is limited to one book per author, so Stephen King fans will have to
expand their horizons a little bit. Check out 50 books that will keep you up
all night after the jump, and add any other scary favorites to the list in the
comments.

All right, let’s get this out of the way up front: Stephen
King is the you-know-what of horror, and if there wasn’t this pesky rule about
keeping it to one book per author, this list could almost be wholly populated
by his terrifying reads. This book might be the scariest of the lot, and has
the added bonus of being about fear itself — the scariest thing of all. There’s
also a murderous, shapeshifting clown.

This novel isn’t “boo” scary; it’s more like “set your teeth
on edge for days and make you never want to be close to anyone for the rest of
your life” scary. The protagonist, overcome by an urge to pierce the flesh of
his newborn child, decides to do the right thing by capturing a prostitute and
taking his issues out on her. There is much talk of cutting Achilles tendons
and the horrifying things that can build up in a ostensibly normal person’s
soul.

Straub is another master of contemporary literary horror,
and Ghost Story, which was his breakout book, remains one of his best. The
Chowder Society, a group of old men who gather to tell each other ghost
stories, are set upon by the horrors of their past — and some other horrors as
well. Plus, Straub pays homage to the entire genre, something that could have
been hokey in lesser hands but turns out to be fairly devastating in his.

This book is one of the most disturbing modern classics
around, so upsetting that in some countries it still has to be sold
shrink-wrapped. Sure, there’s all the violence and upsetting sex, but what’s
really terrifying is that the inside of Patrick Bateman’s head might be the
inside of anybody’s.

It was tough to put Hell House above I Am Legend, but hey,
the world is full of choices, and this writer finds haunted houses scarier than
vampires. And, as Stephen King commented, “Hell House is the scariest haunted
house novel ever written. It looms over the rest the way the mountains loom
over the foothills.”

Many speculative novels could have made this list, but
Atwood’s vision is one of the scariest of all, perhaps because it just feels so
possible — in it, the world is run by a religious, misogynistic society that
keeps women as breeders and laborers. It’s fundamentalism taken to its furthest
point, something that should terrify everyone down to their
not-yet-uniform-issue boots.

Or really any Lovecraft, who is the Captain of the
heebie-jeebies (At the Mountains of Madness would be a solid choice, but “Best
of” covers all the bases). This is a man whose guiding principle was “cosmic
horror,” so you’d better believe he’ll chill you to your bones.

Not only is this book a mind-blowing haunted house story,
it’s also the only one on this list to actually give the reader the feeling of
claustrophobia via the very act of reading. A singular, expansively
existentialist horror story that will invade your mind for years to come.

Here’s another haunted house story — or perhaps the haunted
house story, so often is it referred to as the best in its category. It’s a
much more standardly built classic than House of Leaves to be sure, but don’t
let that fool you. It’s the oldest houses that have the most ghosts.

The fear Kafka produces is an existential kind of fear, but
it’s fear nonetheless. What’s scarier than a lifetime of isolation,
misunderstanding, and relentless pursuit by forces that you can’t understand
but who have complete power over you? Not much.

Bleak, bloody and extremely psychologically upsetting, the
first book in Barker’s series of short stories was hailed by Stephen King as
“the future of horror” when it came out in the mid-‘80s. With some 30 stories
in the collection, there’s something to terrify everyone.

No, not Courtney Love’s nether regions (although…), but
rather the debut novel of contemporary horror great Joe Hill. The premise is a
little hokey — an aging rock star buys a poltergeist-infected suit that turns
on him — but the story will keep you up all night.

Simmons has a number of strong contenders, but this one
might just be the scariest. In this world, a tiny cadre of humans have The
Ability — that is, they can psychically control anyone, even from a distance.
Don’t buy it? The novel won the Bram Stoker Award, The Locus Poll Award for
Best Horror Novel, The World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and The August
Derleth Award for Best Novel. Just saying.

Butler’s science fiction and horror tends to be terrifying
and beautiful at the same time — not an easy feat — in which a tentacle-covered
alien race saves the last members of humanity, but demand a steep price. Junot Díaz called this one the scariest book he’d ever read,
writing, “This book still gives me nightmares and teaches you right quick that
no trade is ever free.”

Stephen King once called Jack Ketchum “the scariest guy in
America.” This book, one of his many greats, is truly terrifying and torturous
in every way. It investigates the horror families can inflict on each other,
and will have you looking askance at every quiet house in the suburbs.

In some ways, this list could be populated entirely by
Holocaust novels, but this one might just be the most harrowing. In it, a young
Jewish boy wanders around a series of small villages in Eastern Europe,
encountering cruelty upon cruelty and sexual abuses that will leave you
shuddering.

Jagged and surreal, Koja’s debut novel is both an
existential masterpiece and scary as hell. A young couple find a hole in the
floor of their apartment building, so black and bleak and alluring that it
can’t be anything but oblivion. Obviously, they start poking stuff down it.
They don’t like what comes back.

Right now you worry about ticks when you walk through the
tall grass. After reading this novel, you’ll never walk through the tall grass
again. Smith makes a convincing argument that nature is trying to kill you.

Another giant of the genre, James is a must-read for any
horror fan. His stories, though lacking in horrific details, will creep up
behind you and sit on your shoulder, whispering in your ear, for a long, long
time.

A World War I soldier wakes up in a hospital bed having lost
all of his limbs and facial features, trapped in what’s left of his body,
unable to move or, at first, communicate, or even kill himself. If that’s not
horror, nothing is.

If you think Pan is a cute little fellow with a pipe, check
yourself. This terrifying novella, of which the great god Lovecraft wrote, “No
one could begin to describe the cumulative suspense and ultimate horror with
which every paragraph abounds,” features brain surgery and Greek gods and
murder. What more could you want?

For every kid who grew up in the ‘80s or ‘90s, Schwartz’s
series was the pinnacle of scary shit. Or perhaps it was Stephen Gammell’s
ultra-disturbing illustrations. Either way, we’ve never forgotten the
experience, so for children or not for children, this series makes the list.
“The Big Toe,” you guys.

Vampires have become a little too familiar/sexy to be scary
most of the time, but this existential, unusual novel brings them back into the
dark, with streaks of pedophilia, bullying, castration, and love. As often,
even scarier than the movie.

In the title story of this collection, a supercomputer
becomes intelligent and kills off the entire human race, minus five survivors,
whom he has fun torturing as they struggle to survive. It is one of the
scariest things you’ll read. And then you can play the video game Ellison made
out of it.

Sometimes hailed as the first nonfiction novel, Capote’s
masterpiece, which dramatizes the murder of a Kansas family, also elicited a
lot of questions, both at the time of its publication and more recently, about
how non-fictional it really was. Either way, the book is a terrifying
investigation into murder and the unstable minds of killers, its connections to
reality, whatever they might be, only deepening the fear.

Now here’s the stuff of every aware citizen’s nightmares:
nuclear war, with a healthy dose of unambiguous evil and crazy people on the
side. Constantly compared to King’s The Stand, but somehow more brutal.

Yeah, this isn’t even a horror novel, but rather an
investigation into infectious viruses, particularly that time Ebola broke out
15 miles from DC, told thriller style. It will scare you into many extra
hand-washings to come.

This novel is a horrifying, blistering, deeply upsetting
trip into the mind of a psychopath, hiding in the body of a normal guy. Unlike
certain other normal-guy-psychopath books, though, there’s no ambiguity of
purpose. Monsters are among us.

Michael, 17, has
managed to protect his little brother, Patrick, from flesh eaters by convincing
him that the nightmarish scenario that they’re experiencing is all a video
game. This fresh take on zombies rockets forth like single, exhaled breath,
meshing action, intelligence, and emotion.

Two Iranian teen
girls love each other, but homosexuality is a crime in their country. So Sahar
decides to have sex-reassignment surgery and become a man. A groundbreaking,
powerful depiction of gay and transsexual life in a culture that forbids it.

This unconventional
look at a dark period in history encompasses the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918,
WWI shell shock, national prejudice, and spirit photography, all told through a
straightforward and welcoming teen voice.

Orphan Jinx finds a
home with the wizard Simon, but she loses some of the powers that he possesses.
In this expertly paced book, Blackwood elevates familiar fantasy elements and
introduces exquisitely credible characters who inhabit a world of magic and
whimsy.

Written in the
tradition of Harper Lee’s classic To Kill a Mockingbird, this moving
historical novel follows the trials of an 11-year-old boy who stutters. His
hope fortifies and satisfies in equal measure.

Using the Jewish
mystical practice of Kabbalah as a touchstone, this story is both thrilling and
meaningful as it leads spunky Dahlia through a wondrous world, where she makes
contact with a Talmudic scholar from the past.

Rosa, 14, growing up
in East Harlem’s Puerto Rican barrio in 1969, wants to be more mainstream, but
her activist abuela inspires her to join the Young Lords. Both wry and
moving, this blends the personal and the political without denigrating either.